May 7, 2011

With "SlutWalking, the old anti-rape protests acquire a new angle... after a cop at a 10-person meeting at Osgoode Hall Law School said: "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

The cop has already "grovelled profusely," by the way.

It gets your attention, but then the question is, do the women — and men — in the protest dress sluttily?

Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.

Kind of a dilemma, isn't it? Getting women to dress like sluts and all come out to a protest where it's socially acceptable acceptable to gawk and take photographs?

I wonder who, really, is promoting these protests. Perhaps a lot of different people with various mixed motives. "SlutWalking" a catchy title, but there so much that can go wrong, including divisiveness among women. How do the jeans-and-T-shirts women react to the woman who are seizing the occasion — like it's Halloween — to parade about in "slutty" clothes?

65 comments:

...women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Not 100% effective, but I'd say it helps. Walk through a high crime area looking like you have lots of money, of flash money at the wrong bar before you leave, you up the odds of getting robbed.

Locally, a couple was arrested for following big winners home, 50 miles or more, from casinos in Indiana. For some odd reason, they didn't follow big losers home.

Crime prevention experts will tell you that the way you walk, talk, dress, your posture, facial expression and many other physical signs affect your chances of being a crime victim. Some people need to learn to live in reality.

So we never blame a victim? Ever? Right. There are times when victims are victims because they put themselves in harms way. Scarlett caused Franks' death because she was where prudence would dictate she not be.

The cop was right, but common sense will not be entertained. I have a natural right to carry large amounts of cash and jewelry, in plain sight, and it's absolutely wrong for anyone to whack me over the head and take them. That doesn't mean it's not a pretty dumb thing to do.threr

People have always had the right to deny the reality of human behavior and other natural laws.

But nature is a ruthless teacher, as Darwin observed.

Protesting gravity is alright, too, up until one tries to test that demand from a tree limb or an open window.

While the definition of modesty may vary with the times, and there is no right for a Taliban enforcement of the reality of human evil, such evil does exist, forever undiminished by protests.

Women dressing like strippers seem surprised when men conclude they are probably stripper-like in terms sexual freedom, and indeed wish to claim that even were they to walk around totally nude that that signifies nothing at all about sex.

It's a claim only an intellectual would make, without expecting to get laughed at.

Yes. One can dress within whatever the law provides (no bare boobs for women on Main Street. Bare chests for men OK in many places on Main Street.) Libertarians can take their debate about that some other place at the moment.

I do not think (unlike the general Muslim male population, apparently)that revealing / tight / sexually teasing clothes cause a man to sexually assault a woman.

That being said, this raises a diferent question in my mind . . .

When does it rise to the level of sexual harassment for women to drop their breasts in front of men's noses ad nauseum? Or have their butt cheeks peek out at everyone at WalMart or while buying gas?

Since human guys are hot wired biologically to respond to visual and other cues, why is it okay to 'push that button' and give the guys at the gas plaza all involuntary hard ons just because.

(Ducking.)

Now Trooper apparently likes living like that all the time, (he appreciates beautiful women, we get it ;-) ) but other guys have jobs outside their boutiques and when one is at a meeting and boobs are dripping on the table, the physiology involved can make work much more difficult for males.

Why are there rules for "appropriate" decorum in the court room, Prof? Do you campaign for more boobery at the bench?

Some women think it's "cute" to half dress. Some women like to feel like they are eye candy for all to behold. (Look, don't touch!!) Some women know it's provocative and elicits responses in men which they historically have responded to with wolf whistles. Or worse. And I have to grant that some women are totally clueless.

I realize we are in cultural transition (when are we not?) but why is it always cool and cutting edge to strip away, [<-- pun. Ya think?] instead of ... well I am not sure what the words are -- respect? Honor?

If someone wants to dress like a "slut" ('you'll know it when you see it' ;-) ) ok -- but don't whine because others in your culture think it's a form of sexual harassment or 'inappropriate.' I realize the cop crossed the PC line.

But why is it PC?

Just morning musings. Don't throw me out of the House. :-)

(And someone put on their own Slutwalk here last week. Did they 'raise anyone's consciousness?' I have no idea.)

Women are right to demand control over their own persons free from assault from others. Excusing assaults from men is not the answer that law enforcement should give to the "How to be safe?" question. Now go apply that same set of rules to the Labor Unions.

To restate what others have said, but in my own unique way, we can separate moral admonishments from prudential admonishments - i.e., "don't be evil" vs. "don't be stupid".

I recommend that men not rape women. This isn't because it's risky: I'm not warning that you might be caught and punished, or that your victim might be armed. In fact, if you do try rape a woman, I would prefer that at least one of those possibilities be true.

I also recommend, if a woman is going to be in an environment in which certain clothes make it more likely that she will be raped, that she not wear those clothes. This is prudential, and, in fact, if it's really important to her that she be able to dress a certain way and the extra risk is small, maybe the benefits outweigh the costs. Aside, possibly, from the example she's setting for younger women, she won't be doing anything morally wrong. But there's also nothing wrong with reminding her of the costs.

Women have been and will always be their own worst enemies. Dressing like a slut is the same as fighting words. You're dreaming if you don't think that dressing like a slut is communicating a sexual invitation to all who can see you. Now, that invitation isn't an invitation for an assault, but it is an invitation to be noticed sexually by all who see you. Ufortunately, not all of the people who see you will construe the invitation corectly--most will see it as a look but don't touch invitation, but rapists aren't most people.

Yeah, nobody dare tell women about steps they can take to protect themselves against violent predators. If they don't follow the advice, does that mean they deserve to be victims? No. But could information, like that offered by the cop originally, be helpful? Yes.

Rape is ALL about powerlessness meeting up with aggressive male dominance. The slut look is intentionally one of a powerless, willowy young girls who do not resist aggressive male dominance. It is a costume party designed to excite the the pursuer and the pursued. This policeman was simply pointing out that the Police cannot be there all of the time, so please help them out and don't do sexual dress up games among strangers.

If you dress to attract attention, some of that attention may be unwelcome. If you are lucky, that unwelcome attention will be nothing more than a pass from someone you aren't interested in. If you are unlucky, or make poor choices in companions, where you go, how drunk or sober you are, then the risk goes up of something worse happening.

Since, though, it is apparently possible to select any consistent set of components at all of human nature to praise or dispraise,... every community will naturally differ in its code of rights, just as it differs in its language. In actual fact, therefore, there are no such things as 'human rights'. There are the rights of Englishmen, the rights of Americans, the rights of Mexicans, the rights of Japanese, and so on

Did everyone here go to the Taliban school of fashion? Once started, where does this discussion end?

Women (and men) may dress however they like within the confines of the law. Other people may respond to that in any way that conforms to the law.

That there are places where the reach of the law is limited or delayed is should not surprise anyone. Thus a prudent person, might not rely only on the law to constrain the acts of others, but lack of prudence is not, as yet, a crime.

Currently however, physical assaults including rape are crimes in America.

If you read we are suggesting that some women raise their consciousness about the impact of their clothing choices, their environment, their personal choices about many things. ("Choice" being such a cool word these days ...)

Do women have a reasonable expectation that they will be "protected" by cops from evil people if they hang out in evil people attracting environments exuding provactive sexual messages?

I'm with Freeman. When you make choices, your first duty is make informed choices, then you have a duty to choose to learn how to protect yourself instead of expecting the cops to be your body guards, and evil people to behave civilly. (Did I spell that right?)

Evil people exist.

All this is not about the cop who spoke truth to power (or was that truth to PC?). It's about responsibility.

Women have been and will always be their own worst enemies. Dressing like a slut is the same as fighting words. You're dreaming if you don't think that dressing like a slut is communicating a sexual invitation to all who can see you. Now, that invitation isn't an invitation for an assault, but it is an invitation to be noticed sexually by all who see you. Unfortunately, not all of the people who see you will construe the invitation correctly--most will see it as a look but don't touch invitation, but rapists aren't most people.

A lot of good ideas there. Will respond to a couple of them.

What women do most of the time when they dress slutty is to show an apparent willingness to be sexually available. And, a lot of the power that women have over men is just that, being able to pull the guys' chains with their sexuality. Usually, no harm done, because our attention span for this sort of thing is so short.

But the standards for dress that are imposed on women are mostly imposed through peer pressure by other women - something that works better with women than men. The standards are imposed because male attention is essentially a zero sum game - what one woman gets, another loses.

And, maybe part of why women seem to be dressing ever more immodestly, year by year, is that our country is such that women most often no longer live around their older female relatives, the ones who would have, in the past, called them on their dress and imposed the peer pressure.

Then, again, regardless of the age, it always looks to the older generation that morals are crashing with the younger generations. And, many of us here are entering those older generations.

In the end, we mostly work out to one man per woman, and visa versa. Which is why women don't like other women poaching. Added to this, women's desirability peaks fairly early, along with her fertility, and then decreases far more quickly than do mens' over their lives.

I watched IRREVERSIBLE last night. It is a movie about revenge for a rape. The victim and those who loved her made several bad choices that ultimately led to the horrific attack. Was the rape victim dressed like a slut? Yes. But that was not the only reason she was attacked.

The community has evolving standards of sluttiness and sluts have evolving standards of community. The red carpet is an idyllic community where everyone is beautiful and nip slips are flowers in the meadow. The invention of double backed tape has freed women from the boundaries of decolletage, and many women wish to celebrate this new freedom. But, of course, the red carpet is a controlled environment, and I would caution women against wearing dresses whose neckline plunges below the belly button in other settings.....I was going to observe that women dressed a lot sluttier back in the seventies, but perhaps that was because my slut awareness sensibility was so much higher then....I suppose in Saudi Arabia the men mutter about those cheap tramps who gussy up their eyes with mascara and false eyelashes. Damned sluts are begging for it.

No, many of those women who claim rape in college were not really raped. Or, at least not as most of us understand it. We are mostly not talking about someone stalking them back to their dorm room, breaking in, and physically forcing sex upon them, and they being unwilling.

Rather, a number of related things are working together here. First there is the date rape sort of thing. The girls will find themselves making out with guys, that moving to heavy petting. Then, maybe she says stop, as he is extraordinarily sexually stimulated at that time. Or, much more likely, she just doesn't resist all that much when they get to that point. Or, she goes along, and then has regrets the next day. I would suggest that probably a good number of one-night-stands that people get into have some of the later two.

And, then there is binge drinking (and some drugs too). It is the girls who are doing the binge drinking, much more than the guys, who tend to spread it out through the week more. You think at times that the alcohol environment on campus these days is not that dissimilar to that we faced when we were there. But, then, something comes out that forces you to realize that it is very different. Things like the training classes about what to do with alcohol ODs, and then hearing about how common they are.

And, besides alcohol ODs, another side effect of too much binge drinking, is that females, esp. at that age, have a lot more sex that they regret. The girl gets drunk. Some guy cuts them out of the crowd. They start making out, petting, etc. and the next morning she wakes up in his bed, or just knowing that she had had sex with some guy she shouldn't have.

This can be resisted, and is by many co-eds. But, as before, it is a zero-sum game, with the sluttier looking and acting girls getting much more of the male attention (and semen).

I was going to observe that women dressed a lot sluttier back in the seventies, but perhaps that was because my slut awareness sensibility was so much higher then....I suppose in Saudi Arabia the men mutter about those cheap tramps who gussy up their eyes with mascara and false eyelashes.

It does change over time - it has to. Note that women's dress seems to invariably expose one part of their anatomy until it is over-exposed. And then, it shifts to another.

Breasts now are over-exposed. There isn't much else that can be exposed, except maybe nipples themselves, and we actually see some of them. What are we going to see next their - women going topless?

My memory of the late 60s into the 70s was short-shorts and mini-skirts. And with the latter, trying to see what was up there. They got as high as they could, and then after awhile, interest moved elsewhere, because women couldn't out do each other. And, that is where I think we are with breasts now.

I can't speak for men or how they think. I can however share some of my husband's thoughts and my experiences regarding women who 'dress like sluts' or who overtly exude loose sexual moral signals.

First of all there is a difference between being sexually attractive to the opposite sex and being a slut. That goes for the man whores too.

Second, no one is condoning actual rape or violence against women because they dress or act inappropriately.

Men obviously are attracted to women who are overtly sexual and don't generally turn down dalliances, one night stands, hook ups with women. Single men especially, since if you are going to go to the "all you can eat buffet", you might as well try as many of the dishes as you can.

However, when looking for a stable relationsip, someone to share your life with, share your money and start a family, the slutty one night stand type of girl is not the one that most men want to settle down with. After all, if she is a slut with you, easy pickings, what guarantee do you have that she isn't just going to be a slutty whore for the next guy and the next?

Women who act like sluts and then get surprised that they are treated with less respect should not be surprised. You advertised yourself as such, why would you expect to be treated any other way.

As a married man and having been around the block a few times, my husband says his first response to the slut and women who throw themselves at him (which sometimes still happens and is good for his ego and mine too since he is MY husband) is.........run away, run away!!.....no good will come of this.

As stated already, there ARE bad people out there. Reality. So women who put themselves in danger by dressing and acting slutty are just as stupid as the men who get drunk and flash big wads of cash and get rolled, of being STUPID. Is it ok? No. Did they get their just desserts? Not really.

But when you put yourself in danger, don't be shocked when it happens.

Assault is wrong and a crime. Public demonstrations by citizens reminding us of that fact are meritorious.

There is also some merit in encouraging people to be prepared to physically defend themselves from assaults, via personal or weapons training. But the lack of such training is not wrong and suggesting that it were confuses the essential point of the demonstration. Assault is the crime, and it is wrong whether defended against successfully or not.

For the rest, it might be fun to pontificate about sex, desire and the nature of evil, but that is simple onanism.

Assault is the crime, and it is wrong whether defended against successfully or not.

This is both true and irrelevant. Different societies have different standards for acceptable conduct, and those standards evolve within societies over time. People can always assert "rights" that violate those standards, but they do so at their own risk. For example, you have the right to free speech, but if there aren't enough cops to protect you from the consequences of walking through certain neighborhoods shouting the "n word" wildly, being warned about that by a cop doesn't violate your rights.

I think the point of these demonstrations is to help change this society's definition of how women can dress without incurring some responsibility for what may happen. The argument can proceed on multiple levels--first and foremost, is there really a correlation between dressing sluttily and being raped? I'm not convinced that there is. But supposing that there is, the next question is: By how much do we increase police resources in response to an increase in the number of women who choose to dress like sluts? These demonstrators would say, "Whatever it takes." Their critics are saying, "I'm not willing to subsidize your inner slut's desire to go public." That's a policy debate, not a "rights" issue.

I find it disturbing that so many otherwise highly intelligent people still equate rape with sex.

Unfortunately it typically is about sex Angela. When you look at the criminology research on sexual assaults, it's apparent that the rapist's motivation is usually just sexual gratification. There are some rapist profiles that are based in domination and control, but they don't constitute the majority of perpetrators. Many rapes are opportunistic. And victims tend to fall into profiles as well.

The idea that rape is really a metaphor for something else is a political position. But it's not a good analysis of rape incidents, or why rapes occur.

There are sluts, and then there are post modern sluts. In NYC, there are women who wear truly shocking outfits. They don't wear them in public--if you don't count ducking into a cab as pubic. They wear them to parties and restaurants where they have the reasonable expectation that their daring will be met with stares and not gropes....Also there might be a class element to all of this. The dot com billionaires used to dress in jeans and t-shirts to meetings with their bankers. They did this just to piss the bankers off. "I can dress any way I please and you can't." Celebrities and upper middle class women who wear revealing outfits are celebrating not their daring but the protection that wealth and privilege afford them.

Chip S. I disagree with the rights thing. I would go with "inalienable rights endowed by his Creator" and so some rights transcend societal context. After all, rights which are dependent on the societal context are nothing more than straws in the wind. They can change in a moment and what was once a right is now a crime.

As for " What are we going to see next their - women going topless? At the office, too distracting. At the beach? Yes, please."

I don't know what your experience is with topless and nude beaches, but there is a reason we pay Very Attractive people loads of money to take their clothes off: most people are far more attractive with their clothes on than with them off.

From 30 years ago living in a Muslim country, I recall stories in the newspaper about the 49-year-old neighbor raping a 13-year-old, impregnating her, and then marrying her to "make it right." Seemed that sort of story was common.

Women in Muslim countries don't go out alone. The reasoning is this: we all know men are evil. If a woman is out alone, then she is voluntarily exposing herself to the deprivations any man who comes along. If a gang of men rape her, then it was her fault. That's how they roll and she asked for it. She knew they were evil.

Context is very important. There are some contexts where an outfit would be very appropriate, and others where it is totally inappropriate. I did hear tell a complaint about the very attractively dressed young women at work. They are trying to lure the older men, the high-status men. When they get too much attention from the low-status young men, the women go crying to the Human Resources Office. Modestly dressed women don't get the attention, and they don't need to complain to the HR Office.

I would go with "inalienable rights endowed by his Creator" and so some rights transcend societal context.--Milwaukee

I have no practical objection to this. In fact, I strongly prefer living in a society full of people who share those beliefs. The mass murders ordered by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are examples of how the social order can degenerate horribly when belief is displaced by nonbelief.

But how do we justify to Muslims, for example, our opposition to incorporating elements of sharia into our laws? Like you, Muslims claim divine authority as the basis for their notions of rights. A fully justifiable reply, I think, is that our laws and social norms are based on deep features of Western civilization, and so they are ours to defend. We can refrain from trying to Westernize them while insisting that we remain Western.

Overall, though, on the issue of slut-wear, I was basically arguing along the lines of something else you said: Context is very important. There are some contexts where an outfit would be very appropriate, and others where it is totally inappropriate.

Oh, and speaking of context, my experience with topless beaches was on the Cote d'Azur, and it was excellent.

Isn't it odd that some much of this sort of stuff comes from university campus' or government programs promoting victim status as a desirable goal? Maybe we shouldn't pay so much attention to people who choose to live outside of the cause-and-effect world or who live completely off the public dole and tax revenue. If it looks like a duck it is probably a duck.